Ultrasound (US) imaging has provided useful information about the interior characteristics of an object or subject under examination. A general US imaging system includes at least a transducer array with a plurality of transducer elements. When scanning with a pitch (center-to-center distance between elements) greater than half a wavelength, grating lobes will occur. Grating lobes are caused by sound energy that spreads out from the transducer at angles other than the primary path. These unwanted ray paths can reflect off surfaces and cause spurious indications on an image. One approach to mitigating grating lobes is to reduce the pitch to less than half a wavelength. However, to reduce the pitch for a given transducer aperture, more elements and hence transmit and receive channels are required, and, unfortunately, this increases overall transducer cost, and complexity.